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My thoughts and prayers are with the family... This is so sad!!! I hope the driver gets life in prison. A young girls life snatched away due to poor decisions and a woman who had no regards for her life or anyone's elses

If we had the general Euro attitude toward bars in business districts we might have less driving while drunk, too.

[snark] But I'm sure she just didn't see that family there on the sidewalk, and how could she know that she hit something? She was driving a big vehicle ... and wasn't it irresponsible for the mother to be walking with children on the sidewalk in the first place. [/snark]

Yes, because it is never okay to talk about anything whenever some people think it isn't okay. Because it is easier to shut down all conversation "because its insensitive" than to actually deal with problems in our society.

So, when, according to rules of Kathode's World, is it ever time to talk about what societal and structural changes are needed to stop the killing of people by motor vehicles?

Or is it always "insensitive" to expect those who fear change to contemplate changing the world so that our kids don't get killed?

I think people like you are insensitive. You think you have some right to shut down valid conversation because you have some personal rules that you think everybody should follow, based on your personal comfort level and cultural notions of appropriateness. Well, guess what: not everybody has heard of your rules or accepts your rules.

1. I live in one of the most densely populated areas of the United States
2. I live closer to Boston City Hall than Adam does - by approximately 3 miles.
3. I spend the majority of my waking hours in the City of Boston
4. I don't drive a minivan. My motor vehicle gets 50mpg. My primary vehicle burns about 1,000 calories per hour.

Also, we disrespect the departed if we don't talk about how we can prevent other people from dying in the future. Somebody mentioned Scandanavian laws, but those strict laws work only because of a concommitant investment in non-automobile options of travel. 0.02 and 0.04 BAH limits are not workable in our society because many people lack viable alternatives to cars.

Unless and until we can discuss these events in terms of potentially preventing future ones, we will continue to have these horrid tragedies, we will continue to have children killed horribly, and we will continue to pretend that they are entirely about the actions of a single person rather than the failure of society to muster the moral and physical courage to stop the murder.

Looks like she's taken a turn for the worse since doing this profile. Reports say the SUV had a "Media Soul" logo and this refers to her as a Babson grad, former instructor at Babson and founder of Media Soul. God bless the 7 year-old and her family. Thanksgiving will never be the same. Tragic.

This is a terrible, tragic collision, and following closely on the heels of another. A bloody week.

I hope that they are able to prosecute this criminal to the fullest extent, and that the family is able to find peace, somehow.

But the responsibility does not end there. BTD is responsible for maintaining the conditions which led to this death. The automobile-addicted assholes of yesteryear, who designed this death trap, are responsible.

This is no accident. Olney Street is wide. Enough asphalt for 2 travel lanes and 2 parking lanes, and then some. It's practically begging drivers to speed recklessly on it, maybe coming on a wild turn off Geneva.

We need our residential streets to be safe, instead of industrial kill-zones where nobody is safe unless surrounded by two tons of steel.

We need our streets to be safe so that children can walk (or bike) to school and activities without the fear of one reckless driver destroying a family forever.

We need to realize that this is a choice that we can make.

We can choose a path of widening streets and speeding traffic, as we did in the bad old days, a world where parents fear to let their children even walk on the sidewalk.

Or we can choose another way, where car convenience is not put above children's lives, where street design focuses first and foremost on the safety of the people living and walking along it.

Since the 1970s, the Netherlands and the United States have taken different paths when it comes to engineering streets. While the Dutch tackled traffic deaths and injuries by designing local streets where walking and biking are safe, convenient ways to get around, the prevalent approach in America was to apply highway design principles to local streets â€” wider and straighter was thought to be safer. The superiority of the Dutch approach turned out to be dramatic: In 1975, the traffic death rate in the Netherlands was 20 percent higher than in America, but by 2008 it was 60 percent lower. About 22,000 fewer people would die on U.S. streets each year if the nation had achieved safety outcomes comparable to the Dutch

The difference? The Dutch people decided that it was completely unacceptable for children to be killed. And so they changed their ways. When will we?

No one is saying this is an isolated incident. It was, however, drunk driving and has nothing--zero--to do with with poor street design. Dorchester as we know it was designed and built as a streetcar suburb, not a raceway, more than 100 years ago.

It has a lot to do with poor street design. Yes, the woman was OUI, and she should be held culpable for that crime. But her rampage was enabled by the dangerous design of the streets, which makes speeding easy, even for a drunk.

More background: Dorchester was designed as a streetcar suburb, yes. In the 19th century there was a fad for wide streets, mostly unpaved. Street layout commissions did not anticipate the invention of fast motor vehicles. Then when cars were mass-produced, and started killing people and children in large numbers, many parents in many cities started calling for slower speeds to be imposed by any means necessary. For a variety of reasons, mostly due to the industry not wanting to lose speed as a feature, these efforts were quashed around the country. One of the excuses they used, by the way, was: "blame reckless drivers, not the rest." As a result, we have 19th century wide streets that are fully paved and with hardly any mitigation for the much-faster vehicles which use them today.

If the original street designers did not anticipate the dangers posed by fast-moving motor vehicles of today, well that is unsurprising. But it does not absolve the responsibility that today's street designers have to make streets safe, even if they have inherited poor conditions. And they have had nearly a century to think about it in the context of motor vehicles.

I want people to think about the consequences of our choices as a city. Enough with brushing the death of children under the rug, chalking it up to just "another drunk driver" or similar excuse. It's more than that. I want this to stop happening. I hope that other people want this to stop happening. And instead of just wishing, making real change, and confronting our addiction to dangerous streets.

First off clearly speeding was not "easy" for the drunk. She did hit a few things along the way

Secondly, the street is a 50' ROW laid out in 1876 and revised in 1883. It has what looks to be 7-8 foot sidewalks which leaves a 34-36 foot curb to curb travel and parking way. Assuming its 36 feet, that leaves two 7 foot parking lanes and two 11 foot travel lanes. How would you change this?

Remove the parking lanes? They present a pedestrian SAFETY feature as they shield pedestrians from traveling cars AND they discourage speeding.

Clearly in this case, this is an event that NO design featur could improve. The driver was reckless (as evidenced that she hit a car, hydrant, child, adult, fence and ultimately came to rest at someones front door. She was likely speeding to evade a previous accident. I dont think she cared if it was an easy road to speed down.

So do us a favor, get off of your illogical rant in this topic. While yes, many of the downtown roads have been unnecssesarily designed in an auto-centric fashion, that has NOTHING to do with this story.

We should just demolish Dorchester and start over? Again--I can't even believe this conversation is happening and I can't imagine the kind of redesign you're imagining that would've prevented this. Why you're so bent on ignoring the main cause of this accident is beyond me and your hyperbole and callousness isn't doing any favors for anyone who believes in livable streets.

I can see that this will still take some time for you to accept and understand.

Let me just point out one final time: the Dutch went from having more dangerous roads than us, to having much safer roads than us. The reason? They decided not to accept the death of children on the streets. They decided to do everything in their power to change the story. And they succeeded. Read about the movement "Stop de Kindermoord" (Stop the child murder) in the 1970s. Read about how a group of parents changed their entire country because they refused to stand back and let more children be killed. You can start with the link I posted earlier. Here's a more thorough article with pictures from that era.

The only callous act is to not speak up, and to pretend that this kind of event is acceptable. It is not.

The main purpose of livable streets-type movements is to prevent these kinds of tragedies from happening in the first place.

so what exactly are you proposing? Wider sidewalks? A ban on cars? You just are babbling. This case has nothing to do with a desire to go fast. I dont drive, I take the t and ride my bike and of course walk. The point being that this street was not dangerously designed. A drunken lunatic was trying to flee the scene of a previous accident and NOTHING you speak of could have prevented this tragedy. The cause was intoxication not some evil plot of BTD to make the streets dangerous.

Again, you have an agenda. You are using this unrelated case to push your agenda. That is not opinion, its what you are doing and I find it disgusting.

I CORRECTLY am placing blame on the intoxication of this woman. Did you know she tried, insanely, to back her car up after this and bystanders had to yank her out of her car? If you want to talk about what can be done, we can as a society be less tolerant of drunk driving. Would it have prevented this case, probably not, but nothing you speak of would have either.

Are there cases where your criticism of BTD is valid? Yes. Congress Street at PO Square to the Greenway is a perfect example of a road being better designed for vehicular speed and capacity while bikes and peds are an afterhtought (those bike lanes are dangerously designed incorrectly). And this is my point. If you want to go on a rant about this, there is validity to it. But pick your spots if you dont want to sound like a nut. This case, this location, this situation have nothing to do with street design or speed and have everything to do with intoxication. Ms. Mora asked "what happened?" when she got out of the car. Should the neighbor have answered "BTD conspired to make the sidewalks narrow and the streets wide so you could drive like a drunk asshole."?

Of course I hold the driver responsible for her behavior. But I also believe that safer streets through design do make a major difference in preventing these tragedies in the first place. The core principle of a livable street is that it is a place where you do not fear to walk.

My agenda is safety of people using streets. If you believe that this is not relevant to a case where a child is killed while walking along the street, then I don't know what to say to you.

I am not proposing any particular design plan at this time, certainly not before full analysis. I am proposing that people become aware of this problem, and that we stop treating these kinds of deaths as unavoidable consequences of our transportation system. They are not acceptable, they are avoidable, and there needs to be a change in attitude about it.

Being less tolerant of drunken driving is certainly one part of the answer. We have made progress but seem to still need more. When I was growing up my parents told me about their high school friends who had been killed by drunken drivers. They said that intoxication used to be a scot-free excuse. Well that is no longer the case, thankfully, although I am not sure how well the system works whenever we hear about someone caught for the 5th or 6th time.

But OUI did not, to my knowledge, play a role in the Cummins Highway death of a few days ago. Driver recklessness is not the whole story. The design of streets plays a major factor in determining outcomes. That was the root of the "Stop de Kindermoord" movement in Holland. And it worked. They went from worse than us, to much better than us. I believe that it is very important that we take those lessons to heart in order to prevent future tragedies, and not just sweep another life under the rug, with "business as usual" thinking.

You act as if the rest of us will just have to wait patiently for enlightenment to dawn on us. No one here is arguing "against safer streets" or valuing "fast driving more than the lives of children." To suggest so is despicable and disingenuous. You've also failed to make ANY case as to how the design of this specific street contributed to this specific accident--you're just using it to rant about your particular cause which, ironically, is one that we share. Again, IMO, you're not doing the livable streets cause any favors here.

Strange that you say that we share the same goals. We might, but you seem to interpret it differently than me. I don't know where you stand exactly, but for me, preventing the death of children is one of the primary objectives -- if not THE primary objective. Therefore, this kind of tragedy is exactly the time to bring up the need to make our streets safer. Certainly, on a general public forum like UHub. I also brought up some historical examples (1970s Holland, 1920s USA) where grief and outrage motivated significant social movements to stop the killing.

The lesson I drew from the failure of the safer streets movements of 1920s USA is that the auto companies and clubs were successfully able to deflect criticism of their products and methods by passing it off as purely a matter of driver education and law enforcement. They said "it's only reckless drivers that are the problem." By absolving street design of any and all responsibility for this crash, and by attacking my argument for safer streets, you are effectively playing into those same hands.

I am a little surprised that someone who claims to be a walking advocate would not understand the importance of raising awareness. That is why I asked you to wait and consider.

Regarding tone, I'm trying (and maybe failing) to be as level as possible at this point. It has been difficult. I might come off as cold. I cannot help that. It would be nice of you and the others to extend the same consideration.

The problem with spending trillions of dollars making all urban, town, and village center streets up to Dutch standards is that pedestrians go and take more risks like not looking up from their cell phones for traffic when crossing the road or driveways crossing the sidewalk. They also lose the nursery school concept of sharing by crossing streets and making others wait when it is not their turn. Studies show that jay walking increases as traffic speed decreases, for example. If you absolve pedestrians of all responsibility for looking where they are going, should we also mandate padding on everything on sidewalks (trees, benches, fire hydrants, sign posts etc)? Its bad enough that pedestrians don't look up to see trains coming or don't think Don't Walk or RR crossing gates are for them and their safety.

That's not what happened in the Netherlands. Spend some time there as a driver, cyclist, and pedestrian. The planning and careful placing of visual cues has have the affect of keeping people more alert, not less.

Oh, must be because there is no speed limit in many sections, thus drivers need to pay more attention. Here, driving so slow causes highway hypnosis, and too much temptation to take on various additional activities while driving since so little concentration is needed at palatial speeds.

If secondary roads are made slower, it might foster more texting and other distractions. What we could do instead for maximum safety where most important, is reduce speed limits to, say, 20 MPH near schools. Oh, we already do that - school zones.

Autobahns aren't just different in their lack of speed limit. They are designed to fundamentally different criteria (US Interstates in the West were built to a 72mph design speed; in the East it was much lower). There are other differences, regarding driver training and high taxes on fuels supporting more careful maintenance and an intensive emergency response system. I suggest you educate yourself.

for example they penalize you for not having emergency supplies. Which makes total sense, but here in 'merica we dont like being babysat. 99% of emericans do not know how to safely pull their car over in the event of a breakdown etc. Even folks with German cars usually dont know what to do with that orange triangle in their trunk (nor do they care because no one ever taught them roadside safety).

Really? That low? Where did you get 72 from? Is it a number like 42? In some cases Interstates look designed for higher speeds than the Autobahn. 72mph might have been the original goal in 1950 with 1950 cars, 1950 drum brakes, and 1950 tires that predate radial tires and modern rubber compounds. 72 mph might be the limit you are thinking of for older roads like route 128 which were then renamed into Interstates. Vehicles can and do go 72mph through some Interstate interchanges, even. Perhaps 72mph is the design speed for tractor-trailer trucks at night, and not modern cars in the dry and daylight?

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 called for uniform geometric and construction standards for the Interstate System. The standards were developed by the State highway agencies, acting through the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and adopted by the FHWA. The standards are included in the AASHTO publication A Policy on Design Standards -- Interstate System available from the AASHTO web site. Examples of design standards for the Interstate System include full control of access, design speeds of 50 to 70 miles per hour (depending on type of terrain), a minimum of two travel lanes in each direction, 12-foot lane widths, 10-foot right paved shoulder, and 4-foot left paved shoulder. Initially, the design had to be adequate to meet the traffic volumes expected in 1975. Later, the requirement was changed to a more general 20-year design period to allow for evolution of the System

And yes Virginia, these standards have not really changed (other than anticipated traffic volumes) since the 1950s.

That is the design limit also with standardized maximum width and height. Some states like Maine have higher weight design of 100,000 lbs on state roads used by logging trucks. I frequently encountered them when I was going to/from Sugarloaf Mountain. So, yeah, 70 mph is a good design maximum for 80,000 lb trucks.

Much cheaper and advanced than redesigning and reconstructing every street would to put speed governors on every vehicle with GPS indexed database of speed limits by location. Then we mandate chem lab interlocks to operate a vehicle with constant breath, serum, and urine monitoring with mass spectrograph analysis for any sort of mind altering substances. Or make everyone buy self driving cars. This can be extended into regulating all thermostats so people don't produce excess CO2 by heating above 65 degrees or cooling below 82 degrees. Then making all bikes be like HubWay bikes so they can't go too fast. Then make trains go slower and stop on a dime via radar controlled brakes so nobody gets hit by them and dies.

#1: No street design, good or bad, changes the culpability of the drunk driver. Morally, an accident is 100% the drunk driver's fault.

#2: Looking into street design is not "blaming the road", or "shifting the blame away from where it belongs: on the shoulders of the drunk driver." It's, instead, taking a comprehensive approach to solving a problem.

#3: If it turns out that road design A experiences accidents (including those caused by drunk drivers) at 5x the rate of road design B, then it might make sense to look into changing the design of road A to be more like B. That line of inquiry and action might just save some lives. It has nothing to do with "whose fault was it."

I'm reminded of something I once heard a transportation safety expert say: "Yes, sure, all these accidents [in this report] are a result of stupid pilot errors, but it turns out that we see these stupid pilot errors under the first set of conditions about twice as often as under the second set of conditions. Which do you think will prevent more accidents: reminding pilots not to be stupid, or changing the conditions?"

I'm a longtime advocate for pedestrians, cyclists and livable streets but there's a time and place for these discussions. Until I hear evidence that this street is some kind of death trap--we all know that there are streets like that--I'm going to hold off on making that leap. Maybe before then we can discuss substance abuse treatment and drunk driving prevention but for now I think I'll stay off the soapbox.

A few points. 1. Caps are not your friend. 2. Name-calling...not helpful either. 3. Gratuitous use of the f-word? Again...doesn't help make your weak point any stronger.

"Emphasis on car use" did not kill this poor child and hospitalize her mother. One drunk driver did. This didn't happen at an unsafe pedestrian crossing or at a badly designed intersection. A rant about substance abuse or mental illness or drunk driving might make sense--but there is no street on earth that's so safe that this accident could have been prevented.

The drunk driver drove down the street, sideswiped a parked car (that helps protect people on the sidewalk), up over the curb, knocked over a fire hydrant, hit the mom and daughter, hit a fence, and came to a stop in somebody's yard. The drunk driver needs to be in an Amsterdam cafe, after serving jail time for vehicular homicide.

Could I ask you to please shut the hell up? This is no time for a rant and your premise is ridiculous--trust me, if I find myself agreeing with Markk then there are some serious flaws in your argument, not to mention the inflammatory crap about the BTD. Olney St, I'm almost certain, was designed around the turn of the century and is a residential street, not a highway, not fundamentally unsafe in any way. This was not a "traffic death"--it was a tragic crime caused by extreme negligence and God only knows what combination of substances. What this family is going through I can't even imagine--this is every parent's nightmare.

.... is a way to avoid the intersection at Geneva and Bowdoin, so it probably gets a lot of through traffic (and not just residential traffic). In any sensible country, the murderer-driver would NEVER would be allowed to drive again.

Olivia Mora is a central character in Miles Corwin's new book. He says of her background: "By the time she was 16, she had lived in a dozen foster homes. She had been removed from her home at age 12 because of abuse, and she was at one time virtually homeless and living out of her car. Yet, she was still taking a full load of honors and AP classes her senior year."

Just sour grapes because you didn't think of it first or have a sense of humor. The connection is that people need not look like the ethnicity they declare. Someone didn't think the alleged drunk driver looked black. I don't know of any standard minimum content to declare oneself ethnically anything. After learning of Mora's ethnic declaration, I can see the "high yeller" characteristics.

I've written probably hundreds of internet comments on various websites and interacted with all kinds of people, but you truly are the only person I've ever seen whose posts always leave me saying "What? What?!!".

Spare me the liberal platitudes about where this human excrement is going. I wonder how much time you've spent around woman prisoners and how much you know about the amount of consensual relationships that develop on the tier?